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Couch potato subsidies: TV goes digital.


THE FIRST DUTY of government is to secure our fundamental rights. No doubt that is why the Senate agreed in November to spend up to $3 billion retrofitting old television sets to guarantee that every man, woman, and child in these United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area.  would be able to enjoy high-quality digital broadcasts of Desperate Housewives Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series, created by Marc Cherry, who also serves as show runner, and produced by ABC Studios - The Walt Disney Company's main television studio - and Cherry Productions. .

Sen. John Ensign John Eric Ensign (born 25 March 1958) is the junior United States Senator from Nevada, serving since January 2001. He is a member of the Republican Party, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.  (R-Nev.) had initially proposed an amendment limiting the subsidy to a paltry $1 billion, but a spokesman later told the Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency.
Associated Press (AP)

Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world.
 that the senator had decided to withdraw it, on the grounds that money saved would just be spent on other projects. The cash will buy converter boxes for sets that would otherwise stop receiving signals in early 2009, when night falls on the age of analog broadcast TV.

That year is the deadline for broadcasters to complete the transition to digital television--a task that requires them to give at least $I o billion worth of analog frequencies to the government. Don't worry that they've lost out on the deal: The digital spectrum Congress gave them in exchange, way back in 1996, was then valued at $70 billion.

In a country where some 85 percent of TV-owning households already travel to the vast wasteland over cable or satellite, why has the government spent almost two decades steering highly valuable spectral real estate to such an inefficient use? Thomas W. Hazlett, who served as chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent executive agency of the U.S. government established in 1934 to regulate interstate and foreign communications in the public interest.  in the early '90s, calls over-the-air TV broadcasts "a vestigial organ vestigial organ
n.
A rudimentary structure in humans corresponding to a functional structure or organ in ancestral animals.
 that is massively costly to the country not to be using for things like mobile phones and wireless Internet." Under a system of genuine property rights in spectrum, he suggests, broadcast frequencies would be sold off for those more valuable uses.
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Author:Sanchez, Julian
Publication:Reason
Article Type:Brief Article
Geographic Code:1USA
Date:Feb 1, 2006
Words:290
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